InterstateQ.com

Why a McCain Nomination is Good for Gays – and a Presidency May be Better

What I am going to say may seem counter-intuitive, but hear me out. No, John McCain is not as good on many gay issues as the leading Democratic candidates, who at least pay lip service to gay issues like ENDA and relationship recognition, and who did show up to LOGO’s debate last year – but John McCain’s nomination as the GOP candidate for president is very good news for GLBT Americans, and his presidency would be even better.

Since the end of the Reagan presidency and the fall of the Berlin Wall, a war has been on for the soul of the Republican Party. The alliance between social conservatives (voters motivated by “the culture wars”) on one hand, and conservatives whose main issues are fiscal policy, national security and personal liberty on the other (often called moderates), has become unstable – and for much of W’s tenure, the culture war conservatives have been ascendant. Not for nothing was it often said that a moderate candidate could not gain the GOP nomination because “he’d never get through Iowa.”

And yet, here we are, with John McCain, the senator so known for bucking his party’s line that he’s been tagged with the term “maverick,” as the presumptive GOP nominee – and that he got there tells us a lot about changes in anti-gay attitudes among the Republican rank and file.

Some background on McCain: he not only twice voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, he spoke eloquently against it as unconservative and unnecessary – a risky move for a Republican with presidential aspirations. When fellow Arizona lawmaker, Representative Jim Kolbe, came out in 1996, McCain stood up for him, saying that Kolbe “has the respect and appreciation of most Arizonans.” McCain has met with the Log Cabin Republicans openly, and his staff includes openly gay individuals. And, of course, he once famously referred to the religious right as “agents of intolerance.”

Many will note that Mac has recently made some moves back to the right – speaking at Falwell’s Liberty University and the anti-gay robocalls in FL come to mind, though it is a good sign that McCain is reported never to have seen the script, and senior staff stopped the calls almost immediately.) But what few have noticed is what he hasn’t done. At Liberty, he was upfront that he didn’t always agree with social conservatives, but that what mattered were the things they had in common. He did not back down from his positions, even in the lions’ den - but he did reach out to the other side, a valuable trait in a president. Similarly, speaking before CPAC after Super Tuesday, the annual gathering of hardcore conservatives who are most skeptical of his candidacy, McCain did not gay-bait, not even in code (ht: the Malcontent). The words “traditional” and “family” never left his mouth. His references to God were minimal, coming either in his concluding “God bless you,” or in discussion of our God/Creator-given rights – basically, he took his tone from our Founders, and that’s a good thing. In what was the most tempting forum to pander to the right by using the old “smear the queer” tactics, he did not do so. If he didn’t attack us there, he won’t attack us in the general election or in his administration – and that’s something worth noting.

And social conservatives have noticed – James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who as recently as 2004 was being hailed as the Republican king-maker, has declared that he cannot and will not vote for McCain in the general election. While “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is often too simplistic, I can’t help but think that in this case, it’s true. Dobson sees the writing on the wall – a McCain nomination represents a triumph of the moderates in the party, and the marginalization of his fundamentalist demographic – and when the Religious Right loses sway with the GOP, that is good for GLBT Americans.

And a successful McCain candidacy would be better.

McCain getting the nomination is a good sign for the state of the party today, showing that most of the GOP doesn’t demand a gay-basher as its flag-bearer, but as Huckabee’s ongoing candidacy shows, McCain doesn’t have an iron grip on the party – and many will take a loss in November as evidence that Republicans can’t win by running moderates. This hope has within it the seeds for its own destruction, because the pendulum could so easily swing the other way. But if we believe that the arc of history tends toward justice, then it should take a lot to bend things back in the direction of discrimination. And at the very least, John McCain will have to run a very different kind of campaign than George W. Bush did in 2004 – to win, McCain will have to reach out to independents and moderate democrats. Polarization as embodied by the Rove strategies only hurts him – almost as much as it hurts the country.

John McCain is a good candidate for gay people for reasons beyond what he represents as potential leader of the Republican Party. Jonathan Rauch (renowned libertarian scholar and author of Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America) argues that McCain is a tonic for the GOP specifically and the partisanship that has plagued Washington for the last decade more generally. Unlike Obama, whom my esteemed friend Brian supports for the democratic nomination, McCain has an extensive track record of working across the aisle to solve problems, from the Gang of 14 compromise on judicial nominations, to working with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform, to his well-known partnership with Joe Lieberman on a variety of issues. Where Obama claims to be a force for bipartisan unity (while never referencing his record as one of the most liberal members of the Senate), McCain is the real deal.

And that same willingness to reach across the aisle is the best thing for gay Americans in a McCain administration. Take “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for example. Yes, McCain has expressed some support for the policy (though it scarcely seems heartfelt) and voted for it back in the early 90s. But he is the only candidate running with a good chance of ending that wrong-headed and expensive “compromise.” When Bill Clinton tried to allow gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly, he created a firestorm of criticism from the military establishment. “Who was this guy, this liberal who had never worn a uniform, to change or criticize military culture?!” they fumed. Well-intentioned as it may have been, Bill Clinton came across as somebody who wanted to use the military for social experimentation as a means of pandering to his far-left base, and he simply didn’t have a leg to stand on – and neither would Hilary or Obama. John McCain, on the other hand, is a veteran, a war-hero from a profoundly military family… the Pentagon could never attack him as not understanding military culture. Like Nixon going to China, it may well be that only a Republican veteran can change this policy. While I don’t foresee McCain pushing for this change himself (again, Obama and especially Clinton realistically won’t go there, either), if a Democratic Congress finds the will to actually pass a bill (ironically more likely with a GOP president, since they might believing signing the bill would hurt him politically with his base), it is unlikely that McCain will veto it, not with polls showing that 79% of the populace support allowing gays to serve openly, and the fact that he must have served alongside gay soldiers in Vietnam himself. It is to his shame that he did not support these soldiers before, but as a generally honorable man, I suspect he would take advantage of the opportunity to correct this error in the future. Similar arguments could possibly be made for ENDA and hate crimes, which he last voted on 12 and 8 years ago, respectively. Divided government has a way of getting things done that one party doesn’t necessarily want complete credit for, and it would be interesting to see what the Democratic majorities would try with McCain in office.

On the issues, it is true that the Democratic candidates offer more in the way of direct support of our positions – but a McCain presidency offers the chance for something much more valuable: an American political world in which neither party relies on anti-gay animus for success. A Republican leader with a long history of talking to gay groups and supporting gay individuals. And a return to the political center, a place that is every day becoming more friendly to GLBT Americans. Now that’s a change I can believe in.